“There was my house”: the social configuration of children in resettlement process on the northern edge of the city of Curitiba

Abstract

A qualitative research involving visitations to the previous and current neighborhood – a housing estate from the My House, My Life program – over the span of a year. In these conversations, both the children and their parents informed that they relocated due to lawsuits filed by Curitiba’s Popular Housing Company (Cohab), since those areas were in a context of gentrification, namely, real estate appreciation. In their previous neighborhoods, children had already established a solid network of friends and relatives, were cognizant of safe locations with reasonable infrastructure to play. The current neighborhood, geographically removed from the city center and the center of the neighborhood itself, has poor infrastructure and, furthermore, displays the same (or perhaps even greater) issues, mainly related to drug trafficking, bringing concerns to the children, compared with their previous residences. This indicates that the city’s policies only shift these problems to the city’s edges, by making gentrified neighborhoods safer and better equipped, while ignoring the needs of residents, especially children, in the new neighborhood.